Milosz and generation

I've recently begun a volunteer gig as an Assistant Editor at a literary publisher. I read and vote on submissions, providing feedback to authors on their manuscripts if they're not accepted. It's been really fun and it's only been two days - I'm looking forward to many more experiences like this. At first, it made me feel like jeeze, why am I not writing more? I'm writing my blog, I've written two poems in the last week. This is not a huge creative surge for me, but then again, I'm sick. When I'm sick it's really hard to get my creativity going - it's like it gets sucked into a huge well of bad sleep and self pity and frustration and codeine to quiet the cough. But it's also really exciting me - I love to read the ways other writers play with words. I keep asking myself the following questions as I read, and explore what people are conveying within.

What do they value in their work? 

Do they value the sound of a line, the lovely interlacing play of language on the tongue, letting that provide both sound and context? 

Do they value narrative and the inherent storytelling? 

Do they seek to shock? 

Do they soothe or confront?

I've also been reading a  book compiled and edited by Czeslaw Milosz, A Book of Luminous Things, An International Anthology of Poetry. It's seriously delightful and has poems I'm familiar with mixed with many I had never read before. Each shines in its own right, and Milosz introduces each poem with a few thoughts that guide my thinking toward the artistry behind it and not just the poem itself. I often like to read a book like this many times, the first time without the commentary and then again through, relating commentary to poem. And then again just picking and choosing and lingering over my favorites. 

For example, I love Kenneth Rexroth.

(excerpt from Signature of All Things, Part 1)

                  The long hours go by

I think of those who have loved me,

Of all the mountains I have climbed, 

Of all the seas I have swum in.

The evil of the world sinks.

My own sin and trouble fall away

Like Christian's bundle, and I watch

My forty summers fall like falling

Leaves and falling water held

Eternally in summer air.

And I love W.S. Merwin.

(excerpt from Utterance)

the echo of everything that has ever

been spoken

still spinning in one syllable

between the earth and silence

Yesterday I wrote a poem intended to be grounded in the right now, in the moment. The moment I captured was a moment when hiking with Anna and Julia and Aaron two years ago, and I'm quite happy with the results. I'm going to be taking these Milosz poem introductions and trying to write a poem that I feel matches the introductions - sort of an homage to the explanation instead of the poem. That'll be my next writing exercise. I'm also taking a course from Luna Luna on Poetry as Memoir - perhaps these two things can go hand in hand.